Musings on the road to recovery

Yesterday was one of those days. One of those days where I heard my body screaming at me to stop, but, in order to please a 6 year old girl, I pushed on anyway. In my defence, my baking honour was at stake – I’d left the oven on 220c instead of 190c ish and burnt the lemon drizzle cake. I don’t know if anyone else does this but if I burn something or it tastes rubbish (Great British Baking Jumbles and traditional shortbread – I’m looking at you here, and we won’t go into my disasterous attempt at Millionaire shortbread – 4 cans of Carnation Condensed milk,2 attempts at the caramel, 3 attempts at the shortbread base and the whole lot went into the bin. The kitchen looked like a demon specialising in carnage had struck the kitchen, leaving flour based destruction in its wake and Mr RR to deal with the fallout. Well not me obviously! I said baking was one of my hobbies, I never claimed to do the cleaning up afterwards 😉 ), I have a need to prove myself and revert to a familiar recipe in order to restore my confidence. My fall back recipes tend to be shortbread and fairy cakes with buttercream icing and jam. None of your fancy red velvet,Hummingbird cupcakes here, oh no. These are dyed in the wool, butterfly cakes like your Nan used to make. Sinfully bad for the diet, crammed with sugar and tasting of school summer fayres circa 1992.

In any case, I’d burnt the cake. Not such a big deal usually but I’d promised this young girl some cake, forgetting that the Law of Sod would be immediately evoked with that promise and that therefore everything baking wise that I would touch, would fail. My hastily assembled back up plan consisted of her helping me to make some shortbread, in an attempt to make it up to her. I’ve never baked with a child before and this one wasn’t even mine, so a new experience all around. A new one for her too as her Mum can’t bake so this was the first time she’d made biscuits. There something about a child laughing gleefully as they roll out the raw shortbread mix which is quite cheering….until they’ve done it lots of times and you just want to whack it in the oven and get it over and done with. Look, I said I was trying to be a nice person, I never said I was a saint. Let’s just say that there was a lot of laughter (and flour) covering the kitchen worktops…and floors…and clothes…and cats by the time we’d finished.

Which brings me to today. Today is not such a good day, needing help to get dressed and not able to have a shower unless Mr RR were to help me, and for someone who’s not at ease with their body, this is always the last possible resort. Today is a sofa day, accompanied by painkillers, heat pack and hopefully a kitty or two. If you were to suggest a day like this to me pre accident, one where I could read, watch a film or two, accompanied by some chocolate, I’d have found the mere thought blissful, a moment of peace in a busy life. Now it chafes, like a pair of knickers which are too small. It’s sunny and I want to stamp my feet like a petulent child being denied their favourite toy, I want to go into the garden, go for a walk, out for the day, I want to DO something and instead, I’m stuck indoors. I know I sound like a whiny brat and I apologise for that, just feel sorry for Mr RR who is stuck with my whinging and constant demands all day. Poor bloke.

It’s a decision borne out of necessity, I have an appointment with Rheumatology tomorrow and Occupational Health on Tuesday. If I’m ever to convince Occupational Health that I have a chance of getting back to work then I have to be sensible, be mindful of how I feel and strong l enough in myself to try and persuade them that the cocktail of drugs I take won’t impair my ability to teach. So, meh, I will be sensible, gaze longingly at the sunshine outside and settle down to watch the never ending loop of episodes of Star Trek Voyager and X Files that Mr RR will subject me to. Either that or find a trashy novel to accompany my big bar of Galaxy.